


your walls are thinner than you think

by failsafe



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Implied Relationships, Multi, Multiverse, POV Multiple, Present Tense, Psychological Horror, Soul Bond, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate hasn't felt well in months. Tommy is pretty sure up is down. And Eli gets an unexpected visitor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your walls are thinner than you think

**Author's Note:**

  * For [subwaycars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaycars/gifts).



> I really hope that you like your yuldetide gift! I must admit that I am very behind on my Vol. 2 reading, but I had read past Tommy's issue and so I kind of played fast and loose with canon. Basically, I kind of divided the Patri-not as something not entirely explained by the Mother arc, which I assumed to have been resolved. I did this in part because I don't know canon's standing on it and just in part because of the story I wanted to tell since you said you were open to AUs. It personally really frustrated me that Kate had little to no reaction to Tommy's disappearance because they were at least friends so this kind of acts as fix-it fic. There is also a soul-bond element to this story but I tried not to be too heavy-handed with it as the characters themselves haven't yet explored the idea.
> 
>  **A note about relationship tagging:** The relationships tagged are not all explicitly featured and I tried to tag them more or less in the order of their possible prominence. Basically, I tried to write it the way canon is often written where there's subtext for a long of relationships being important, but the slashes where they're featured could just as easily be ampersands in almost all cases. This fic is one of the most messy in terms of the definitions of relationships I've ever written so I really hope it worked well. I read in one of your Dear Author letters that you liked the idea of Kate/Clint being a one-sided hero-worshipping crush and so that is what I was going with for your intro scene with a little bit of a twist. I really hope you like it! Happy holidays!

The rain outside Clint Barton's apartment beats down and in against the windows. It's loud.

Nothing like the storm a few months back, but that's not saying much.

Clint's not really surprised at the pockets of cool air that seem here and there in his apartment. It's a drafty place at the best he can do. There's a wistful part of him that kind of likes it that way.

Kate Bishop sits on the floor of his apartment, cross-legged and concentrating with a box cutter. The short blade goes in and sweeps through a lot of really tiny tape, no resistance. The box cutter actually seems like overkill.

She pushes the flaps back on the box, the blade contained and set aside, idly spinning around against a floorboard that creaks beneath her when she moves.

“Whatcha doin', Kate?” he asks her.

She looks up at him. Her hair is tied back, a little high on her head, flopping just a little bit when she moves. It catches the light and when she opens her mouth to speak some loose strands hanging down along the side of her face seem drawn to the moisture of her mouth. She bats away at them and doing that seems to stir up some dust from the box because then her whole face scrunches and she lets out a squeak of a sneeze.

Clint thinks that's the least terrifying she's been in a long time. Not that how scary she is is a bad thing.

“God, Clint,” she complains. She doesn't even have to explain what she's talking about as she sniffles to recover and tries looking at him again, blinking a little fast.

“Didn't know you had allergies.”

“I don't.”

“Anyway, what're you doin'?”

Clint pads over to where she's sitting. He's barefoot, wearing sweatpants. He thinks she's probably seen him like that more often than not lately. He's sort of pathetic.

“Going through some of your stuff,” she says, distracted as she turns her attention back to negotiating with the box.

“So we just _do that_ now?” he asks, a little bit of a tease but then he trails off and clears his throat. She doesn't seem put off, but he wonders if he's toeing some line he shouldn't. He frowns a little, letting himself down easy to the floor to sit opposite her. There's something going on. He's worried about her.

“Kate,” Kate says to him. Takes him off guard.

“What?”

“You called me 'Kate,'” she clarifies.

Clint feels like an idiot. He reaches up and scruffs his fingertips through his blond hair.

“Oh, okay,” he says. He smiles rather slowly, feeling it creep and ache across his face. “Katie.”

Kate watches him for a moment but then she's back to rifling through the contents of the box.

“I wasn't saying you had to correct yourself. I was just... wondering.”

“Katie-Kate,” Clint insists simply. He watches as she smiles down at the box, her gaze fixed along the line of her nose, her dark hair still falling forward. The same few strands fall and curl in toward the corner of her mouth. When she doesn't say anything else, he reaches out and pushes the nearest flap down against the box's outer side. That's when he sees the record sleeves.

He looks up to monitor Katie's face again. She still doesn't look up at him, instead just flipping through them like she's at a record store. He notices that there's a shadow beneath her eyelashes—dark circles under her eyes that she doesn't seem old enough to have earned.

“You alright there, Katie?”

“Yeah. I'm just...” Then Kate trails off and he knows she doesn't want to offer the end of that sentence. She adjusts her legs so her knees are pulling up toward her chest. That's a little better. She almost looks her age.

“Don't think I've got any Jay-Z in there.”

“Shut up.” She laughs. That's also a little better, but as she shakes her head and her ponytail sways back and forth he can just tell that something is... different.

\- - -

At first, he thought it was humming. When he blinks open his eyes, the heel of his hand comes up to scrub at his forehead, brushing some of his white hair back from itching at his brows. He feels like he's been out for the count.

Everything is too damn bright.

Tommy tries to focus. Wonders where the hell David is. His friend. Right. His friend—he was supposed to...

When he sits up, he feels inertia seem to push back against him. That isn't right. He's fast. It hurts.

He blinks again. He doesn't see anything. It's not blindness. It's all... white. And he doesn't think blindness is like that. Suddenly panicking, he lifts his hand up in front of his face and he sees it. He exhales heavily, blowing out through his mouth. But then his fingers start to come in and out of focus like tiny particles of light—glitter or something—are getting in the way. He swipes at them but there's nothing there. He can't tell how fast his hand is moving.

Frustrated, he reaches up to scrub his hand at his face again, snarling up his face. As he does so, he's suddenly alarmed by the sudden appearance of his palm butting against his right eye.

 _That_ hurts.

“Shit—” he complains. Or he tries to. When he feels the tickle of vibration in his throat, he doesn't hear anything. He draws in another deep gulp of breath and he swears he hears that. Panicking again.

He snaps his fingers.

Nothing. But then, he'd never been all that great at that among his other many musical skills. He thinks. That's a good reason for it to not work, right?

He reaches up more delicately—very, very careful with the muscle tension in his arm this time, trying to pay attention to that more than the way it is responding to the air in the _room_ around him. He feels his muscles begin to vibrate a little and just hopes that there's nothing particularly volatile nearby. He doesn't want to make anything—especially himself—explode.

His fingertip brushes just along the edge of his ear and then he pushes it in just a little, trying not to be gross but touching it carefully as if trying to discreetly scratch an itch. It's not so much that he's worried about all the nonexistent onlookers—like he would be anyway—but he is really, really afraid of whatever is going on.

There is a faint little scratching sound, so close that he can feel it rattle in his brain. He can hear it when he touches himself.

Well, right now he's not up to testing that theory too much.

But he can breathe again. So he looks around and thinks about standing up. He tests his feet and they find footing... where?

He manages to get about halfway to his feet, knees still crooked, when he seems to meet an upper limit. There's nothing hard there but he has to crouch back down again. It's instinct, protecting himself, but he can't figure out what he's protecting himself from.

He sits back down. When he leans back, he doesn't find much there but something also makes him stop. It does nothing to support the aching muscles in his back. The surface beneath his feet seems ever so slightly more perceptible, defining itself as _down_. That's all he can figure out.

Without anyone there to watch, he curls up and hugs his own knees. Then he hides his face down against them for good measure. He waits. He breathes. He tries not to hyperventilate and he sure as hell tries not to cry.

He feels some kind of familiar, creeping fear. He remembers it but right now he can't put together why. He'd felt it, right before...

But now he's alone. And he's here. Alone in this empty room. It's really, truly empty. There's nothing here. He doesn't even know how he's breathing.

There's nothing here but him.

\- - -

Eli is just barely on the mend when he hauls himself out of bed to get the door. He wouldn't have, but he's afraid his Grandma might've lost her keys or something. If he just went back to sleep after that, he didn't know when he'd stop feeling guilty.

He lurches along and feels himself feeling like he's being dragged back into bed by an external force, sucking the life out of him. But he's not dead, and he's a super-soldier—technically speaking—so he pushes himself against it.

He takes a single glance through the peephole. Because this is New York, and after getting out of New York for a while he realizes just how weird this place is. Because even though he's a super-soldier, he doesn't really have any desire to defend himself.

Hard to defend the indefensible.

He notices that it's certainly not his Grandma at the door. The guy standing there doesn't seem to be an immediate threat either, so he unlatches the chain and the lock, opening it up. He remembers once—a long time ago—someone showing up to the door and looking for some help. Judging by this guy's attire, he's got a deep gut feeling that he's about to get déjà vu. He won't let that happen again.

“Can I help you?” he asks over the sandpaper in his still raw throat. He clears it as politely as he can.

“My name is David Alleyne and I need your help,” the guy answers.

“You got the wrong guy,” Eli says sadly, looking down and shaking his head just a little.

“No,” David says and it draws Eli's gaze back up. It's so flat and unapologetic. “... No,” David puts in again once he has his gaze. “You're the super-soldier who once went by the name Patriot, yes?”

Eli knows he has to put a guard up. And so he does, but it's only perfunctory. He's sick (and should be) in bed, even though his immune system should be better than that. Sucking the life out of him, whatever it was. Maybe getting the Super Soldier Serum through a blood transfusion had diluted it or something. Anyway, he doesn't really feel like he's got much to guard.

“Who wants to know?”

“I do. But I think the better question is who _did_ know.”

Eli feels a sinking stab in his gut. A low blow coming in nice and slow but with enough punch to take his breath before he even manages to ask. Not again.

“... Who?”

“Tommy Shepherd.”

Eli just stands there for a minute. Then he remembers to blink. Tommy's name had been the last one he'd expected to hear, even though he had been standing there bracing for the worst. He kind of feels worse—because there's a lot of feeling bad about the kind of _hero_ he turned out to be going around, even this long a time later—because he still feels like that isn't the _worst_ it could have been. He doesn't let himself actually grab hold of the other half of that thought—of the name that actually would have been worse.

It's funny—almost—that somebody would come to him about Tommy. When they'd actually been on a team together, no one would've come to him first if Tommy was in trouble.

They'd have come to her. Or his brother. And then Eli would've been involved.

But as it stands now, Tommy is the only one who actually knows he's back from Scottsdale, living in New York. Tommy who calls his grandmother on the phone and talks to her sometimes for as long as he manages to babble in his ear. Tommy who sometimes would just show up like he could rewrite their history.

Tommy who _had done_ those things.

“How—” he starts to ask, but David takes a step forward. His foot comes down on the threshold and Eli obliges by backing up. He knows he's going to let this guy in, even though he'd promised himself this wasn't happening again. Even now, he's not sure anything is happening. He's still out of the game, still doesn't have a fight left in him. And what can he do if—

“Forgive me if I've been misinformed about your relationship with Tommy. Yours was the name he mentioned—your grandmother, I think. But I know he can jump the gun a little bit. He decided we were friends after a bowl of noodles.”

Eli stands there and he feels his fingers curl up against his palm and form into a fist of their own accord. He knows he is probably jumping the gun to being angry. The world is still coming through a bleary filter that doesn't make any sense. But he can't figure out what gives this guy the nerve to show up and talk about _another_ friend of his who's _gone_ like it's the damn weather.

Eli hasn't wanted to hit something in a long time. But David's just standing there _talking_ about it and there's an uneasy energy stirring up in his arms that he's forgotten until now.

Tommy was his friend.

“But you're the only one I knew to turn to,” David explains. Turn to for what? “Tommy's... been taken. And I need to ask you a few questions.”

Someone 'needing to ask him a few questions' didn't sound like it was going to end well but Eli lets his hand relax as his eyebrows scrunch up instead. He reaches and rubs at his scruffy head and jerks his chin to indicate that David should take a seat on the nearby sofa. With only a polite gesture and shake of his head, David declines.

“Eli,” David says, and the familiarity startles Eli. “When was the last time you saw your Patriot costume?”

\- - -

Kate doesn't feel well. She hasn't felt normal since New York went back to normal. She hasn't felt normal in a long time.

And yet, on the other hand, she feels fine. She reaches up and scrubs her fingers back through her hair, letting them slide the rest of the way through before she drops her hand down to pick her fork up again. She brushes the tines through the layer of warm syrup that covers what's left of her pancakes. She stares at them, negotiating with herself about whether or not she plans to finish them.

She's doing that when her phone goes off.

The ringtone actually sounding usually means one of two things. The most obvious thing for her to expect when she looks down to see her phone is to see the letters _H. C. C._ flash up on the screen. She doesn't see that. Instead, she sees one of the last people she'd have expected to be calling her.

_Eli Bradley._

She isn't exactly proud of the way she reacts. She tries not to read too much into it—the immediate sideways glance at Noh-varr, the way she is aware enough of his shoulder against hers to squirm a little bit in her seat toward Billy. Billy doesn't seem to mind too much. He's shell shocked again, but at least he doesn't seem to be doing the whole downward spiral thing again. She thinks maybe he's mad enough at Loki not to let it happen, but she doesn't know. It reminds her that Loki also isn't around to be causing the not-right feeling in her head.

Her hand presses down over the face of her phone, blocking out the name and the number. Discreetly taking it off the surface of the table and looking at it down beneath as she holds it against her thigh, her thumb swipes across to silence it.

“You alright?” Teddy asks her. She feels a little buzz of being disoriented flying around in front of her nose again, like a bee, when she hears Teddy's voice straight across from her instead of a little further to her right. Billy and Teddy don't sit right next to each other anymore. They seem to be inching closer sometimes, but it's not the same as it was.

“Yeah, I'm—” she begins to excuse herself. Looking down at the screen, reading over Eli's name again before she neatly clears it away, she trails off and can't really think of anything else to say. Her brows furrow tight on her forehead. She glances over at Noh-varr, but he's laughing about something America is scowling at him for. Glancing back and forth between Billy and Teddy, she can't help but notice a slight divide that she's not really felt since they came back together. It's eerie and makes her roll her shoulders forward, trying not to shiver.

“If you need to take that, we can wait,” Billy offers.

She still shakes her head. As she does, her phone buzzes slightly and she manages to silence it before a soft tone follows the text message, too. Then another.

She tries to be discreet about looking. She has to look. Eli hasn't contacted her but once since he left. She knows if it's this important that it matters, no matter how tempted she is to just let it go. It's complicated—hard to look at in the eye.

 

**Eli Bradley:**

**(19:01:35) : Kate. Pick up your phone. It's important.  
                                                               (19:01:59) : About Tommy. **

It's about the last thing she expected to see when she looked down at her phone. She has more questions than answers or reluctance, so she stands up and slides out from behind the table. She goes Noh-varr's direction, sliding past his knees and feeling him accommodate her movement as if to make some kind of point.

“You alright, Kate?” Noh-varr asks her. She nods as she moves backwards a few steps.

“Great,” she lies, just because she doesn't know the truth right now. “Don't worry about it.”

Teddy raises his eyebrows as he glances down toward where he can see her phone held tightly at her side. She knows he knows what it's like to lie to someone you... care about... because you have to. She also knows how he's been hurting because of it.

This looks bad.

She tries not to think about it as she strolls off in the general direction of the bathroom. She stops before she walks inside, worrying about cell reception even though by all rights her phone shouldn't actually work here anyway. She's got stranger things to worry about right now.

She just stands there, shoulders slacked and heavy as she tries to take deep breaths for a moment. Sliding her thumb across the screen of her phone feels like a herculean effort, but eventually she does and draws it up so she can see it, dialing Eli's number with a few familiar presses that come right back to her. She really tries not to get too bogged down in the familiarity of it.

“Okay,” he says, blunt and kind of curt when he answers the phone. She clears her throat softly and tries not to let it hurt. “First off, where are you?”

“Um,” Kate says, looking around, up and down the length of the diner that most certainly isn't on Earth. “I don't have a street address,” she says, a little dryly. It's almost the way she would have talked to him a long time ago, but there's a lighter, higher-pitched air to her voice and she can't deny that in spite of everything this is awkward.

“Okay, whatever,” Eli says, and for a second she wants to be offended but he's _allowing_ her secrecy, not balking at it.

“... What about Tommy?” she prompts when the only thing she hears is a bit of rustling on the other end of the call.

“Yeah. Okay. I called you because—and I probably should've called you before. I'm sorry—Tommy's missing.”

“He's what?”

“Yeah. I woulda thought you'd have known or something, but yeah, he's... gone.”

“ _Gone_? What do you mean 'gone'?”

“Just listen. Me and this guy—David—we've been trying to take care of it. Look for him. I don't know why, really, but David came to me. And he's the last one who saw Tommy... alive.”

“He's... he's—but you said—” She feels it rushing over her to the point that she has to close her eyes and trust her entire weight to the wall behind her. She can't do this again. She knows sometimes it's part of the job, but Tommy wasn't even, and she can't...

“Listen. We're trying to take care of it, but basically from what we can tell Tommy disappeared into another dimension. And David's really good at this research stuff, so we're not stalking you but according to him you might know someone who can help us with that.”

Kate doesn't know how to respond for a minute. She feels a sort of forward tug in her forehead. She knows she's overreacting. This is what they do. It's what she signed up for. But there's something ready to take her breath. She's _been_ to another dimension, to other universes, but this terrifies her. She can't figure out why.

“Kate?”

“Yeah,” she says, trying not to let her voice shake. “I'm here.” She frowns hard down against the creeping nightmare feeling that doesn't make any sense.

“Well do you know America Chavez?”

“Yeah. Yeah, she's... back at the table.” Trying to go through the reasonable things to worry about, to consider, she suddenly comes up with one she actually does need to ask, that doesn't make her sound crazy. “Why are you not calling Billy with this?”

“I—” Eli begins, and she knows him. She knows she's caught him in something he doesn't know the answer to. She knows he's dodging something again, and for a moment she thinks about calling him on it. But there are a lot of things she's learned to avoid in the past couple of years, too. She didn't even tell Billy and Teddy when she had started hanging around with Clint. Tommy had been gone by then. “I thought he'd take it better from you.”

“Gee,” she says, a sarcastic sentence of its own. She doesn't raise her voice, though. Maybe part of _growing up_ is having all these stupid hang-ups, no matter what they cost. If Clint's any indicator... “Thanks,” she finishes.

“Look, I'm sorry, Kate,” Eli says, and he sounds tired. “I would've told you guys before, but we've been... busy.”

“I bet. And when did you think it was appropriate to face up to what you owe _his brother_ if you're the one who—”

“Kate, let's not _fight_ about this, okay? At least... least not until I see you.”

“Where?” Kate asks. And she waits and she listens as Eli and his new friend—Tommy's friend—talk it over between themselves.

The next couple of hours are sort of a blur. From the moment she hangs up the phone and makes her way back to the table, time seems to drag out more slowly.

“Billy,” she says as her fingers touch down against the table, stretching out toward him reluctantly—through heavy, cold water.

And so they're moving through space again. On her boyfriend's spaceship.

She's pretty sure Billy's mad at her, and if he's not then she thinks he should be.

Curled up by the window, looking out at the stars and at planets going by before they enter hyperspace, she doesn't know how they got here. It's different than the first time she had been wondering that, waking up to find herself in space above planet Earth.

“Kate?” Billy asks, and she feels something almost burn as it makes her jump in her skin.

She looks up at him, because if she owes anybody here right now it's him. She hadn't known until about ten minutes before he did, but there's something more than that, too. When she closes her eyes for a second and touches her fingertips to her temples, she tries to make sense of it but still can't. When she closes her eyes, she's more aware of seeing nothing than she usually is.

“... You okay?” Billy prompts and she remembers that she was supposed to answer him.

“Yeah, I'm—What about you?”

“We're going to get my brother,” Billy says, but he sounds distant.

Kate pushes her hair back behind her ear and then keeps pushing until her fingers are threaded through, holding the weight of it.

“You're not blaming yourself for this,” she says, trying to push the idea that he shouldn't. She's not sure it works.

“He's my brother, Kate.”

“I know, but none of us—”

“I should have. He's my twin. He's...”

Kate turns her attention back toward the window, looking far, far down. At least she thinks it's down. It doesn't really matter out in the near-void of space.

“Does it sound crazy if I say I feel like I did?”

“You did?” Billy asks, confused as he takes a seat near where her feet are.

“I feel like I knew something was wrong with him, but I just wasn't paying attention.”

“Kate. He's my twin. If I didn't know then—”

“You were busy,” Kate excuses him, looking at him as she puts her chin against her knees.

“I just don't get why he didn't tell us before.”

“Who?”

“Eli,” Billy snaps. Then she can tell why he's not mad at her.

Kate turns around so her feet touch the floor. She feels her ankles bend and tingle a little from how long she'd been sitting still.

“Are you sure you're alright?” Billy asks again, but she can't answer him.

She doesn't really notice the movement except that it's fast as she makes her way to the bathroom. The door slides back but she doesn't press the panel to lock it. Instead, she kneels down by the squarish toilet seat and brushes her fingers back against her temples and through her hair.

She hears a murmur back and forth as the door slides back open, but she can't focus. There's just so much whirring, humming _nothing_ in her head. She's too hot, and there's at least some chance she's going to throw up, but that's not quite it.

“Kate,” Teddy says, and she realizes that Billy must've gone to get him.

She can't answer and she clamps her hands over her ears—not to block the sound out but just to put some pressure on her head, the heels of her hands touching just above where the sound filters in and pressing cartilage against her head.

“... Kate,” Billy says delicately as he kneels down in front of her. “I know I shouldn't ask, but are you sure you're not...” He trails off, gesturing just a little and she knows what he's talking about. If she could breathe, it'd be almost funny that he can't just say it.

“Billy, I'm _not_ pregnant,” she gets out. And then, not really helping her point in the eyes of the boys, her eyes start to tear up and spill over.

\- - -

Tommy isn't sure whether the corners of his eyes are burning or not. He's not sure they can burn. He's still staring up at white, but at this point he's not even sure that it's anything. He remembers once in school, before they kicked him out, maybe when he was a little kid, that someone had told him that white wasn't a color. At the time, he'd thought it was stupid but that white crayons were pretty useless. Now he's not so sure.

He knows he's shed tears. He tried really hard not to for a while, but what's the point. He doesn't know if he's cried out or screamed because he can't hear anything but the grinding of his own teeth. Even sound doesn't make sense here. He knows he hasn't eaten, hasn't had anything to drink, in days. Probably days. He's not sure because there's no possible way to tell time. Maybe it's just been a few hours that seem to go on forever because he's not thirsty and he's not hungry.

He is running out of energy, though. Maybe he's dying.

That thought keeps him holding onto consciousness, staring up and occasionally trying to shift his focus. His own body is the only point of reference he has, so sometimes he moves that, too. He doesn't want to die yet. He's sure there was something else he wanted to do, something else he wanted to say, someone he wanted to see...

But right now he can't really remember.

Then after forever, or five minutes, or whatever, the floor seems to open up. It dips down and tilts like a teeter-totter and of course the end that goes down first is the one with his head resting against it.

He feels the vibration in his stomach and in his throat, but he's not expecting much of anything.

Then he's falling down, down, down, and instead of bright white there is some variation and a lot of it's dark.

And yep, he's screaming.

He's fast, and he feels it come back into his limbs like the tingling flood of pinpricks that happens when something falls asleep and you're trying to forcefully shake it out. It's agony, but it feels _alive_ , and he manages to shift himself around and relax the excited molecules in his body before he hits the ground.

It takes his breath but it doesn't kill him.

Again, he finds himself sitting up, looking around.

He wonders if this is what hell looks like. He wonders that a lot.

Rubbing at the back of his head and trying to make it stop hurting, catching his breath, he dimly reflects on the fact that this isn't the first time he's fallen through cracks in the universe. That's what this has gotta be, he thinks.

He is pretty sure this isn't hell. He thinks he's been there, only not really. But there was that one time—the place when he and Billy had taken the bus home. That had looked a lot like hell.

The place around him now at least seems to have some buildings. They're just big square and rectangular shapes that are swimming in and out of focus in near total darkness, but he is finding his feet and he's gonna go check it out, even if he is weak.

Maybe he's hungry and thirsty now.

He really wishes he hadn't been such a damn skeptic when he'd met Billy. Now, he's pretty sure nearly anything is possible, no matter how big he talks.

When he moves his feet, he hears them pressing down against gravel and crunching on leaves. At least, he hopes that's what it is. It's so loud, but he hasn't properly heard anything in such a long time.

He isn't usually one to wax philosophical about things. Except he probably is. He just doesn't share a lot of it because it's not the kind of thing people want to hear first thing, and he doesn't really get many close friends.

He wonders where David is. He kind of hopes he's not lost in some weird hellhole too.

Anyway, he knows that they're supposed to be soul-twins or something. Him and Billy. Not him and David. But he doesn't really know what that means. He has heard Billy babbling about it, and he remembers bits and pieces of it in what he really hopes is an accurate recollection of Billy's voice. It's a lot like his except the slight accent's different. Billy's from the Upper East Side, and he's from New Jersey. Nothing really surprising there.

But he kind of remembers something about where they were supposed to have come from. Originally. Him and Billy. The Scarlet Witch—missing in action after so many promises, but whatever—had wanted them so much she'd wished them into existence or something.

He was kind of glad that Billy didn't really, really want kids at this point. That could look weird.

Then the reason they had died—the first time, the time he didn't remember and hoped he wasn't about to repeat—was because they'd been taken back by the monster, by the demon, who owned the pieces of their souls that had made them real.

So, maybe, it's really just a fact of life he's got to deal with that he's always going to fall through cracks in the universe. Into places that look like hell. Great.

And that would all make a lot of sense really, if not for her.

There was that one time...

They had been running. And the one in the spangly outfit complained about it, but Tommy had decided it wasn't really surprising how often—when they split up—that he ended up with Kate. They worked well together—her up high, him down on the ground running circles around the bad guys.

Only they'd gotten lost and the big warehouse would've been creepy enough with just its seeming endlessness without all the bright red emergency lighting. He wasn't one to get spooked and he was pretty sure she wasn't at all. He thought about reaching out to grab hold of her, to carry her out of here just so it'd go faster. His legs ached with the need to move faster, but he wasn't going to leave her.

Rounding a corner, Kate tried to skid to a stop but he knew she couldn't. One of the advantages to being fast—Tommy can stop on a dime, too. But he wouldn't let her go and so he reached out. He couldn't ask for permission that time as his hand clamped around her wrist.

It was the first time he'd touched her at all in weeks, and if it hadn't been so dire then he might have congratulated himself. Instead, he just focused on not letting go.

That was the day he had learned to really appreciate the fact that he had a sort-of-supposed twin brother who could do magic.

It was sort of like being suspended in water. It stung and felt thick and reminded him of jellyfish.

It wasn't wet, though. He could feel Kate's skin and she turned her hand over and looked at him. And it had gone on for a long time and he was pretty sure that was the first time he'd really noticed just how blue her eyes were even though it was through a kind of purple and then red filter. And he'd heard Billy chanting and frantic and his boyfriend talking him through it and then finally they were free.

It had been days before he'd stopped remembering what it felt like to hold Kate's hand. It was stupid and sappy, but... he loved her.

He knew he did, even if he was never ever going to do a damn real thing about it.

Tommy is snapped out of remembering when his idly poking through the weird, dark surroundings—sort of dumpster-diving in the dark only not, finding strange pieces of wood arranged into weird frames and other random junk that seems to have washed up from nowhere—turns into something else when he hears a low growl.

Shit.

He's fast, but he's weak. He knows it's been longer than a few hours even if he has no idea how to count it. He decides it's best to just run away.

He runs straight and as far as he can and then he just meets a fence. He's too weak to vibrate himself through it so he goes to try to climb and he's about halfway up before he realizes that there's a mass of really gnarly barbed wire at the top. Great. He feels a sting of bile come up in his throat. Prisons. Only this is so much worse.

But then he decides to just stop whining about it in his mind and he lets himself down. There's a little shock of pain up his shins as he hits the ground on his feet but he turns to the snarling creatures—they're not dogs but they have big, obviously canine teeth—but he smiles right back of them, a little mean and nasty.

If he's got to fight hell hounds or whatever the shit—he's going to fight.

\- - -

Eli isn't really sure how it ends up like this. He hasn't seen them in almost two years and the first time he sees them again, it's out away from the city in a deserted New Jersey grocery store parking lot. There's a spaceship and a van.

He gets out of the van and looks across the center console at David.

“So... uh, I'm sorry about this. I know it's not what's important, but this could get a little tense.”

“Let's just find Tommy. I owe him that,” David says as he gets out too.

It's weird seeing the three of them—Kate, Billy, Teddy—with two other people he doesn't know. It's not until he does that he realizes just how much they had been like his family one time. He's got siblings he hardly sees, hardly knows, and he's got grandparents that love him a lot. But they were something else one time. And he messed it up.

He straightens up as Kate crosses to him first. The least he can try to do is to act like an adult about this. He can't help taking in the way she looks now—new costume. He wonders what else is new but this isn't a social call—not yet. Not until they make sure Tommy's okay. And if they can't do that—well, then he doesn't know.

The other girl, he guessed, was America Chavez but he wasn't going to start off with an awkward question. He realizes he's the only one not suited up in a costume.

“Hey,” Kate greets and she seems to be checking out his clothes, too. “Patr—” she starts reluctantly.

He shakes his head.

“No. I'm not. Not anymore. Still not. But from what I hear somebody's using my old costume to hurt people. To hurt Tommy,” Eli explains, nodding over at David. Then he realizes he should maybe break the ice. “This is David Alleyne, by the way.”

“I'm America. Now can somebody tell me what we're doing here? We'll have time for the awkward exes thing later.”

“How did you—” Kate starts to ask, but then she stops, glancing backward and then down at the ground.

Eli feels his face heating up and he shifts his weight a little on his feet.

“Oh. Damn. I didn't really know,” America apologizes. Then Eli sees it in her eyes—the white-haired boy. Not Tommy. And then he recognizes him.

“Why didn't you tell me you were... with _him?_ ”

“What? How is that any of your—”

“It's not! That's not what I'm talking about and you know it,” Eli snaps, gesturing vaguely toward _Noh-varr_. He can't believe Billy and Teddy are just standing there next to him. “That guy hurt people. I'm not saying a damn thing about who you're dating now. Not my business and yeah, I know that, but he—”

“That wasn't his fault!” Kate snaps back at him, and Noh-varr walks up to Kate's other side with his palms up. There's an easy clarity in his eyes, and given that there's a time crunch he knows he's got to believe him.

“Fine,” he says lowly. “Sorry,” he says to Noh-varr, even though he's really not sure if he is or not.

“I can't blame you,” Noh-varr replies. “I... wasn't myself. I'm sorry. But Kate's—they're—safe with me.”

Eli almost feels a smile come on when he sees the little crinkle of distaste in Kate's nose at that response. But it's not his place anymore to speculate about what it means.

“Just be quiet, okay?” Kate asks, sweetly enough.

“So, about Tommy,” David presses, stepping ahead of Eli and crossing his gaze over to America. “You are able to travel through dimensions, right?”

“I thought that was what you guys wanted me for. You gonna tell me what I'm getting myself into? I don't really have an interest in running from my moms again.”

“I don't think it's got anything to do with... that. Tommy's still missing,” David replies.

“We didn't even know he was gone,” Billy says as he seems ready to say something. Eli notices that he seems to be seething. “Which brings me to _why the hell_ did you think you could just keep this from me? Either one of you, but _especially_ you, Eli,” he snaps and Eli feels himself being shoved back by the shoulders before he can make sense of the approach. He doesn't actually stumble backward much. He's a super-soldier after all. But he owes him.

“I'm sorry, Billy. But you guys weren't in New York when—”

“Neither were you! So why did you get to know before—”

“About that. I was—”

“Guys!” Kate snaps. “Listen. We don't have time for this.”

“Thank you,” Eli says, giving Billy another apologetic look but then he sidesteps to look Kate in the eye. “So what's the plan?”

“I—” Kate says, glancing around. She looks more lost than he expects her to.

“What we know is that someone wearing Eli's former costume took Tommy. Looking at him—it was wrong. Terrifying. And I should've stopped it, but when it touched him, he was... gone,” David chimes in.

“So what makes you think I can help you?” America asks pointedly.

“Because we've exhausted every other option.”

“So you want us to go shooting in the dark again at alternate universes. Without the scrawny little _god_ to bail us out or get us into trouble?”

“Something like that,” David admits.

“Right. Then I don't want more people than I've got to take to get him.”

“I'm going,” Billy says, stepping right to America's side with a laser focus.

“I'm not going to let him go without me. Not... not again,” Teddy says.

“And I'm going. I owe him that much. And I might not have powers anymore, but I think I can help you,” David puts in.

“Somebody's out there with my costume. And they hurt somebody with it. They hurt somebody that I...” Eli says, and he can see a little annoyance flare up in America's eyes. He tries to make a point, but one doesn't come up. “I'm responsible for that,” he says simply, glancing over at Kate. She meets his eyes, so he thinks maybe at least that's almost support.

“Okay. Fine. All of you, right? What about you, space-boy?”

“Kate's my girlfriend. If it's important to—”

“Yeah, okay, fine. _Vamos_.”

\- - -

Tommy isn't sure what he's fighting for anymore. He just knows that he isn't giving up. There's a low, cycling hum that seems to inch its way under his skin. He can't tell where it's coming from. Sometimes he forgets about it. Then he remembers and it comes back. He doesn't know if it ever stops.

He's somewhere different than he was the first time he'd fallen through the floor. He doesn't remember how he got here either.

The place smells like fresh wood. It seems new. But everything around him still seems old and dark. The only difference is that sometimes it actually seems to be day here. He feels like he's scraping the very bottom of what the universe—the multiverse, whatever—has to offer. And he's alone.

He can't remember the last time he made a sound except to yell or growl back at something that was growling at him. There are monsters. There are monsters nearly everywhere. And some of them look like they might be people. Maybe they used to be people. But none of them speak.

He's tired. So tired. And he still hasn't had anything to eat or drink with the small exception of some rain that seemed to be made of regular, run of the mill water. It had drenched him head and toe otherwise, so it'd seemed like a making the bright side of it thing to just tilt his head back and open his mouth for a while, forcing himself to swallow what little he could down.

He's on the second story of the structure he's in now, and the floorboards creak. It's dry and pretty warm, but he can't say it's comfortable. It's still creepy and he's cold. He's standing underneath the orange glow of a bare bulb. He looks up and notices a little place up in the rafters with a flat board lying across. There are some scraps of cloth and straw and it looks like someone had been lying there—a long time ago. He wonders a little bit just how many people have fallen through into these terrible pockets of reality with no one ever realizing. No one ever coming to get them.

He tries not to think about it much, even when he's not dizzy, but he really doubts that anyone is ever coming to get him.

He hadn't really known David that well. Can't blame him for running away. And well—everyone else he'd ever really known had run away a long, long time ago. Well, he'd run away from them, but that was just technical. Anyway, they were all gone.

By the time he's sitting beneath a torn blanket that isn't his, his limbs are shaking. He pulls away at the layers of material against his arm until he can examine his skin. On his left arm there are two very clear, gouged bite marks. They're still red at the edges and sore. He doesn't feel feverish, but it isn't good. Still, he pokes at the little marks. The bruised feeling is better than pinching himself to keep making sure this is real.

He closes his eyes and leans his head back to find the solid wall. He appreciates some little things like that now—knowing where the room begins and ends. He wonders if he'll just die here. Pretty sad after all he's fought through.

He almost dozes off when he feels a sudden, sharp ache in his hand along the back, radiating from the spaces between his fingers. Then he swears he hears a voice.

\- - -

Kate's hair is sticking to the sides of her face and she spits when a few strands of it try to worm their way into her mouth. She wishes she'd put it up, but something about having almost the old gang back together seems to have made her forget things she's learned. Lots of things.

“Kate?” Eli asks as they work their way through the brush. He's quiet and she glances back at him, wondering why he's taken point with her. It was just her turn.

“What?” she asks.

“Why are we doing this?”

“Doing what? Looking for Tommy?” she asks, and she feels something inside her flaring up, getting defensive.

“No. I... Who's in charge here? We're just looking in the dark. We're going to get ourselves killed like this.”

Kate stops for a moment and rounds on him, steadying herself against some kind of tangled tree trunk that grows almost horizontal. Then she keeps moving, not wanting to have this conversation in everyone's earshot.

“What do you suggest I do, Eli?”

“I'm asking: who's in charge here?”

“What? You think I should be? I think we both saw what happened the last time—”

“But who is?” Eli presses.

Kate sighs. She takes a minute to just look at him again when they come out into the clear, walking in step with him.

“Look, I don't know. It was kind of... Loki... for a while. Long story, and I bet your friend David could tell you.”

“Well we need something, Kate. Some kind of direction. And you're the one who keeps saying you've got a _feeling_.”

“Well how am I supposed to do anything about that? I don't even know what it means.”

“Well figure it out. You're a smart girl.”

“Watch it,” Kate warns. She knows this is still delicate. It looks... bad. But she's Hawkeye, so she's realizing that's really no surprise. “... And okay. Watch me. You see something you think I'm not... tell me.”

“What?” Eli asks, and she sees the sickening pull of hope spread all over his face when she looks back over her shoulder at him. She keeps his eyes—because why not? Looks like trouble but more like the good kind than she's seen in a while. Besides, she can't do worse than Clint Barton.

“You were always kind of good at that. After you stopped being such a sexist ass,” she admits.

“After that,” Eli agrees, self-deprecating, and she feels a strange little spark of energy, hope, and a renewed enthusiasm in her hatred of this humidity. Why did they have to be in a jungle? “Fine. Got your back, Hawkeye.”

“Oh, that's right!” Kate calls out, and she's pretty sure it's on purpose that it's loud enough that she thinks the rest of them can hear in the rustle that's coming up along behind them, almost to the clearing. “What are we supposed to call you now? If you're not 'Patriot.'”

Eli stops and looks back and she's pretty sure he's glancing at Noh-varr. But she's pretty sure there's no hard feelings and if there are, there's nothing she can do about it right now. Just because there's a curve of a smile on her face doesn't mean she isn't increasingly worried that Tommy might actually be dead. Until she knows, she's got to smile against it. She's learned that.

“I haven't really decided yet,” Eli replies, casually. She's not sure if he's learned the same thing. “I told you, I'm out. But I don't really know if—”

And she wants to listen but there is an aching pain so strong and abrupt circling around her wrist that she has to stop, grip the nearest branch or reed with her unaffected hand, and kneel down. She cries out and gnashes her teeth.

“Whoa, what is it?” Eli asks and she feels him touching her back, over her shoulder blade, steadying her. She clenches her teeth tighter.

“Feeling,” she says. And she means pain but also she's got a _feeling_. And she leans her forehead against the spindly thing she's holding onto and she nods backward, expecting Eli to get what it is that she needs. She rotates her wrist. Not broken. But it hurts.

“Yo, America!” Eli calls out.

“No, I am,” America says as she runs up to the front and kneels down. She feels at Kate's forehead and Kate leans into it. She trusts her. The girl on the team. She tries not to tear up, but if she's honest she's so, so scared she's lost another friend. A friend she hadn't spoken to in a year and a half, but Tommy was her friend.

“Funny,” Eli says. “I think she needs something from you,” he tells her, clearing his throat.

“Yeah. I need you to... _stomp._ Right here, I think,” Kate instructs, nodding enthusiastically just in case her voice is as low and distracted as she thinks it is. She wasn't aware it was possible for her wrist to hurt that bad.

“What? Why?” America asks.

“Just... I think—” Kate tries to explain.

“Just do it,” Eli says firmly but not unkindly.

“Fine,” America says. “Boys!” she calls out for them to catch up.

\- - -

Eli watches how vigilant David is as they're walking down along dirt paths beneath dense concentrations of buildings in a place that is neither a small town or a city nor farmland. It's nothing and kind of horror-movie weird.

“So you were friends, huh?” he asks as they keep looking by the light of some kind of magical ball Billy's conjured. He's been keeping things small from what Eli can tell.

“I think we were going to be friends. It's funny. I sort of thought he was weird, but then that night...”

“He showed you something you weren't expecting?” Eli fills in, and he doesn't know why he's so eager about that idea. Maybe it's just that he took him so much for granted, so much as a nuisance, before all of this happened. Even when they were sort of really friends.

“You could say that,” David says, and Eli sees that smile going across his face that says something about just accepting that about half of this is bullshit that makes him know he's really one of them. Sometimes it's all amazing. Saving the world feels right, even if the after-victory drinking is technically illegal, but then sometimes it's just this. He doesn't know a lot about David except that he used to be a mutant. But he knows if he wasn't one of them—a person like them—that he is now.

Eli guesses he still is, too.

“I should've been there,” he says.

“Maybe you were,” David says, and that smile just grows.

“What, you think I had something to do with that Patriot monster thing?”

“No. But you were sick. And you're... technically an adult. From what I gather, they never quite figured all of that out. They just stopped it. Maybe you didn't actually become a monster. You were there. Maybe you... went to get him. Maybe you saved him.”

Eli's eyebrows shot up and he laughs a little bit.

“That sounds like some sappy bullshit. … But what do I know?”

“Not much,” Kate teases and he starts a little. She's walking near him again. He doesn't know what to make of that, but he's not going to read a lot into it right now.

“Say,” David prompts, and he's looking up and narrowing his eyes. He nods to the upper level of one of the buildings. “Does that look like a light to you?”

Eli looks up and it does, but he looks back at Kate for confirmation. No one has said anything about it yet, but he's been trying to remember. They need a leader and it's not him. Not anymore.

“Tommy,” Kate says urgently and she pushes past both of them and runs straight ahead to the front door of the house. In the absence of a speedster, she's the one most likely to run headlong into trouble. He glances back at Billy. Billy just wishes himself into his.

\- - -

Tommy doesn't have anywhere to go. At some point, his hand stopped hurting so he's just trying to sleep. Maybe he'll dream his way into a conversation.

No one's coming for him. He's used to that by now. They all just forget or don't care. It had been hard the first few times it happened—like when he realized his mom was never, ever coming to get him—but now it's just another day. So when he starts to dream about the cavalry showing up, he squints tight and tries to go into a deeper sleep. Besides, the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs could just as easily be another set of horse-headed dominatrixes for him to fight and run away from.

“Tommy,” comes that voice again, and he knows he's heard it before. Not just once upon a time, but with his hand. He squints his eyes open just in time to see the head of dark hair—damp and sticking to her face but still stupidly pretty and he hates himself.

“Kate?”

“Tommy!” she says, and she's jumping and scraping her wrists to climb up into his—well, his sort of bed—with him. He's definitely dreaming. But then she grabs hold of him and holds him tight—and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming—but then there are more voices and he breathes in and she smells like Kate. “Are you hurt? Billy—” she's ordering him around and he feels more weight against the board.

“I'm not sure how much weight a piece of plywood's gonna...”

“Shut up,” Billy says to him and he hears an affection that he almost wants to punch him for. If he cared so much, why wasn't he here before?

“There's not room for two of me, bro,” Tommy says, deciding to return the affection for now. If this is a dream, he doesn't want to turn it into a nightmare. And if it's real, he can punch a bunch of them when he gets some food on his stomach.

“Let's get him down,” Kate says and he feels wet girl-hair brush against his nose as she looks over her shoulder.

“Let me, Kate,” comes another voice Tommy wasn't expecting to hear.

“Eli, don't,” Kate warns.

“Hey, I didn't say 'let me do it for you.' I said 'let me help,'” Eli replies. And Tommy really, really wasn't expecting to hear him with the others because...

He blinks open his eyes again and focuses on the brown ones down the line between Kate and Billy.

“Hey, quitter,” he says, and that's about as affectionate as sort of calling his brother fat. And he reaches out for the offered strong bar of an arm. He's stronger than most of them because of the force and speed he can apply without really meaning to, and Eli's sturdier than the rest of them no offense intended. But he also reaches for him not just because he's practical but because his friend came for him. His friends. “How'd you find me?”

“You said something about Mrs. B,” David says and he seems to be working with Teddy and some other white-haired dude on moving a heavy piece of furniture for them to use as a step down. “I looked her up.”

“And my wrist,” Kate says.

Tommy frowns at her.

“My hand,” he says back to her. And he knows there's some kind of understanding between them but he feels like shit. They can talk about it later. He hopes.

“You mean you've got a Tommy-detector of some kind and you didn't tell me?” Billy asks.

“Yeah, okay. Okay. Can we... you got somebody who can get us _home_ now? Billy?” Tommy interrupts.

“America.”

“What?”

“My name's America Chavez.”

“Oh. Great. Yeah, okay,” Tommy says and Billy's kind of useless about actually helping with this kind of thing but Kate and Eli are helping him get his feet on top of whatever the hell the thing that he's decided to trust with his life is. He kind of thinks he's been in this position before. “Then take me home tonight.”

He hears somebody groan. He's not sure if it's Teddy or Billy but he doesn't care. He might be malnourished and have infected bite wounds and all kinds of shit, but this isn't the worst day he's had in someplace that's like but probably isn't hell.


End file.
